WEEK #10 (Final)

Today we performed our Marketing presentation.

I am proud of this project -it is a piece of art. The only problem was that we had too much to say in a 4-minute presentation. As a result, we were short in time.

Lesson to get: Always rehearse with a timer before you give a presentation.

There were good presentations in the class. Felix and Leo's video was the best: I still laugh at the dilemma of whipping cream vs. chocolate sauce. John and Kevin's product, Mickey car, had an interesting emotional benefit. I liked Junko and Elly as a team in harmony. The final presentation with Debby and Ashwani with Ashwani's story was also interesting.

I have learned a lot during our Digital Book project in this 10-week period. A few of them:

1) Marketing Analysis
2) Level-3 thinking (Digging, digging and digging)
3) Observation of the marketing strategies some companies choose
4) E-Ink technology
5) What books mean to us; the reasons of why we didn't change its form and material since Gutenberg, 1453
6) Digital books' market segment does not cover every person who likes reading books*

I thank Ken
for being proactive, supportive and hard-working,
 

I thank my class mates
for supporting us with their comments
 

and

I thank Prof. Paul Kurucz
for being an inspiring teacher,
for making every class a valuable learning and understanding experience,
and for introducing the blog world to me
(I am not sure he will read the blogs after the 10th week)

* Why was it a difficult product to market?
Information printed on paper feels physically more real compared to digital files.
You can touch the "information" by touching the pages, enjoy the artistic design of a hard cover, feel the weight of the book, and you can even smell the paper.

This is why so many people like collecting books on their shelves. Even if you haven't read yet, you can feel the "printed information" exits there in your home.

What should the e-reader companies do?
Focus on the environmental side effects of hardcover books

If the "book" has an expiry date like textbooks, instruction guides, announcements, newspapers, etc., then the electronic readers will be more environment-friendly and cost-efficient in long term.

Concerns:
I wonder how would the publishers react to a regulation letting the students have their textbooks all downloaded in their tiny little e-readers for very cheap prices.
And what would happen if the consumers discovered e-readers as the most user friendly way to read daily newspapers?

Would the governments let this happen in the cost of losing lots of business being run by the publishing and printing companies? Would they let many of them go bankruptcy for the sake of trees?

I, personally and sadly, wouldn't expect it to happen in our century.